I rubbed at my temples, where an ache burned, as I trudged back to my room.
Fear swelled and surged inside me.
“Did I dream that?”
Her swift disappearance proved I was hallucinating.
Dragging a hand through my hair to grip the back of my neck, I raced through the compound of the drug I’d spent years formulating, second-guessing whether hallucinations could happen this late post-overdose, but it seemed unlikely.
They’d dosed me with some random shit to fix my fuckup, and because one of the nurses had a look of Nurse Annie, and I figured she’d tie me to the bed if I hadn’t swallowed like a good boy, I’d taken the prescribed meds without too many complaints, but?—
“Seen a ghost?”
Jerking in surprise at the second intrusion in as many minutes, I found my older brother standing in the doorway, right where dream girl had been.
I studied the light over his head. Not that my brother would ever earn a halo… But the LEDs seemed fine. Not malfunctioning.
“I-I might have?”
“Patri?” he inquired calmly, as if the prospect of seeing our dead father was a regular occurrence.
But then, we were Sicilian.
As much as pasta kept our joints lubricated, superstition filtered through our veins more than white blood cells did.
“No.” I rubbed my forehead again. “A… woman.”
“A woman?” His tone brightened. “Does this mean you’re not going to turn into a monk?”
Guilt speared me.
I’d offered God a vow of celibacy when Evangeline had passed away if he helped me find a cure. Evangeline, the woman I’d been certain I’d call wife one day…
“Stan?”
“Drop it, Luc.”
He raised his hands, but I knew my brother never surrendered. Unless it was to his children, who had him wrapped around their pinkies.
Honestly, I hadn’t known my brother had it in him to be such a sap until I’d seen him as a father, and unfortunately for me, this last overdose had triggered less fraternal and more paternal instincts in him.
“You need to fasten your fly.”
“Yes,Dad.”
He grunted as I complied. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“You said that when you woke up the first morning in this hospital room.” Because I was wearing on his last nerve—give me longer than two minutes and I would—he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I know you have a better vocabulary in you,porca troia.”
“I don’t need this right now.”
“No, what you need is for me to shake some sense into you. Remember when I hovered you over the cliff that time?”
“How could I forget? And you didn’t ‘hover.’ You hung me?—”
“It was an order! You never back down from Rory’s orders. You know that better than I do.”
